Answer to the Friday Puzzle….

If you have not tried to solve it, have a go now. For everyone else the answer is after the break.

Each time starts and ends with the same letter:

Nine fifty seveN

Eight twenty threE

and so on. Did you solve it? Any other answers?

I have produced an ebook containing 101 of the previous Friday Puzzles! It is called PUZZLED and is available for the Kindle(UKhere and USA here) and on the iBookstore (UK here in the USA here). You can try 101 of the puzzles for free here.

Not containing a 6 is part of the answer: because no numbers end in “s” or begin with “x” (and because there can’t be a 6 in the ‘tens of minutes’ position), it’s necessary that none of the times contain a 6. So spotting this is a clue.

Similarly for not containing a 0 (though there could be one in the middle position).

Anonalomalom, if that is what you prefer to believe, I can’t stop you. But I did actually “solve it” albeit with some help from the hints in the comments, I still think it sucks golfballs through a hose

I suggested 6 and 0 not being in any of them. It’s not quite equivalent to the given answer since 0 could appear at the end in the time 9:10 (“nine ten”) as well as in the middle before or after the colon.

I suggested 6 and 0 not being in any of them. It’s not quite equivalent to the given answer since 0 could appear at the end in the time 9:10 (“nine ten”) as well as in the middle before or after the colon.

I drew the times on clockfaces, then as on a digital clock. My next attempt was going to be writing them out as words which might have helped. Anyway, it’s a rubbish answer so I’m glad I didn’t bother!

Oh, I also calculated the general formula for the angles between the hour and minute hands: For a given time of format h:m, it is the minimum of x° or (360 – x)°, for x = |60h – 11m|/2. If we include seconds in the format h:m:s, this becomes x = |60²h – 660m – 11s|/120.

For me, this passes the “am I sure that my answer is right once I’ve spotted it” test. But it’s not the most elegant puzzle, in that, with the exception of 9:13, the penultimate digit in each time is entirely arbitrary. In most good puzzles, all the information is relevant.

I thought it was a good puzzle.
I was not able to solve it – but I did guess that there was some misdirection and that calling them “times” was irrelevant.
The fact that I went through a lot of the routines that other people did – angles etc – does not mean I wasted my time. My brain got a workout, albeit I did not get the right answer.

In “The Hobbit,” Bilbo won the riddle game with Gollum, after putting his hand in his pocket and finding what he had absent-mindedly placed there, by asking to himself “What have I got in my pocket?” While there was an answer, and only one, everybody agrees it wasn’t really a riddle. And while there are no hard and fast and rules that make a good one, there are guidelines that should be met.

This isn’t a good puzzle because (1) although all six answers given do fit the stated pattern, there are so many others that fit it as well that the six can hardly be considered a representative sample, and (2) there are other equally arbitrary patterns that fit the six as well.

The list of times isn’t inclusive. Surely to be a ‘decent’ puzzle all palindromic times should be listed, and in a reasonable order. E.g. alphabitcally. So the list of times should start with 8:01, 8:11, 8:21, 8:31… and continue on to the 11’s and 9’s and 1s.

Well….I’m not very impressed. Gotta agree that it was not a very engaging puzzle. When I couldn’t get it, I browsed the comments, found one that hinted at this, but thought surely that couldn’t be right. I’m disappointed that it is.

I felt certain that all six represented times of the day when Richard had despaired of the trap he set for himself by promising a puzzle every Friday, but then running out of new and interesting material. It’s been a good run, Richard, but it may be time to move on to the Friday Bar Bet.

The problem with this puzzle is that it is horribly inelegant–these are presented as “times” and the question is “what’s the connection” which leads one to the expectation that there is some connection based on their being times. Instead, the answer is just some random fact about the words they represent. “They all contain the letter E when written out” strikes me as just as valid an answer (as does “none contain a 6” and probably an infinite number of other details). A puzzle that picks one detail and says *that’s* the solution is a bad puzzle.